Where have the sparrows gone?

Where in the past house sparrows could be seen in flocks almost anywhere, our changing lifestyles and garden makeovers have contributed to their decline in numbers.

A telling indication of the plight of the house sparrow came in the Oxfordshire results of the Make Your Nature survey by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

This year, for the first time, the RSPB augmented its annual Big Garden Birdwatch held in January with a second survey in June when people were asked to count the wildlife visiting their gardens.

While householders were counting the hedgehogs, frogs, badgers and foxes, the opportunity was taken to have another check on birds.

In Oxfordshire, the RSPB had 629 responses from residents. The house sparrow was ranked fifth in the top ten birds seen. It is a confident guess that it would at one time have topped the list.

House sparrows were recorded in 66.2 per cent of gardens in the Oxfordshire replies, while the top spot went to blackbirds with 95 per cent sightings.

Wood pigeons came second with 85.3 per cent, robins were third with 73.9 per cent and blue tits were fourth with 69.8 per cent.

Just below the house sparrows came the collared dove at 63.6 per cent, followed by chaffinch at 56.9 per cent, great tit at 56.5 per cent, starling at 56.3 per cent and dunnock in tenth at 47.2 per cent.

For the record, among the mammals grey squirrels were seen the most, followed by hedgehogs and foxes.

But back to the house sparrow.

Julie Gallagher, a conservation officer at the RSPB’s regional office in Banbury, said: “The house sparrow was once so bountiful or plentiful in urban areas and villages. However, in recent years they have gone into a radical decline, more in towns and cities than in rural villages.”

For instance, in London where house sparrows vied with starlings and pigeons for being the most commonly seen birds, their numbers dropped by 60 per cent between 1994 and 2004.

“It is not just in London that house sparrows have declined, but in many cities in northern Europe,” said Julia.

She experienced the decline when she was taking a foreign language course at a school in Soho Square in central London.

“We used to tape a lot of what we were learning and the tapes picked up the song of house sparrows through open windows,” she recalled.

Nowadays, Julia would be lucky to see one, let alone hear one.

In another part of central London, in Kensington Gardens, more evidence has been recorded of the decline of the house sparrow. In the 1920s, more than 7,000 were logged, but by 2002 only seven were spotted.

“There is obviously something going wrong for house sparrows. They are not shy birds and are very colonial in that they nest near each other and congregate in flocks. They even have different calls or chirps depending on what they are doing, such as mating or raising the alarm when an enemy such as a predatory sparrowhawk is seen.”

Their plight is further indicated as they are now on the red danger list of threatened species as published by the UK Conservation Concern organisation, to which the RSPB and the British Trust for Ornithology report statistics.

What is adding to the puzzle is that house sparrows are resident in the United Kingdom, they do not migrate.

There are two kinds of sparrows — house and tree. Sometimes people believe there is a third sparrow — the hedge sparrow. These birds, with similar colouring and size to sparrows, are dunnocks and have slightly thinner and longer beaks than the shorter, wedge-shaped beak of the sparrow.

House sparrows have been living with people for centuries and and were known by Middle Eastern farmers when they began sowing and harvesting crops. They nest almost anywhere in nooks and crannies of buildings, in terracotta garden pots and have even been recorded nesting on the 80th floor of the Empire State Building in New York and 640 metres down the Frickley colliery in south Yorkshire.

“And until the First World War at least sparrows were so numerous that they were the main ingredient of pies,” said Julia.

So how can we help the house sparrow?

Probably the first or easiest way is to change our attitude to gardening.

Wooden decking, the use of decorative pebbles and stones and the paving over of front gardens for car parking have not helped.

“House sparrows like to nest in shrubs and thick, old hedges. Pyracantha shrubs are a source of berries and clematis seeds are also favoured by the birds,” said Julia.

It is also important to leave a patch of the garden to grow wild and that means weeds. A bare area of soil enables the birds to enjoy a dust bath.

Similarly, water in containers of many kinds that can be easily cleaned can provide bird baths.

Nesting boxes that can be bought from garden centres and nurseries are a help, though single boxes are preferable to a box with two or three nest spaces.

Sparrows are quite capable of using both ends of a multiple box, leaving the central one empty, giving themselves a bit of space. Back in London, an initiative is being tried by the RSPB, volunteers and local council staff.

Extra food is being put out at the prime breeding times, including mealworms. So far the results have been encouraging. House sparrows can breed three times in a season, roughly May to July, and it has been noticed that, while chicks of the first hatching survive, the later chicks do not. Julia suggested that based on the London experiment, the idea might be rolled out to other cities.